


We're Talking

by Bettys_blend



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: F/M, Fertility Treatment, Icky medical jargon, Tearjerker, Will try to make it better, pregnancy loss, tw miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:14:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29254278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bettys_blend/pseuds/Bettys_blend
Summary: Nick and Ilsa are still regrouping two days or so after the Valentine's day debacle.
Relationships: Ilsa Herbert/Nick Herbert
Comments: 9
Kudos: 22





	We're Talking

**Author's Note:**

> TW: miscarriage.  
> While I'm glad you stopped by, I urge you to read something else if you're searching for humour.

_The frost is falling, the frost falls into my body,_

_My nostrils, my ears are torpid under the frost._

_The swift will come in the spring, crying “News! News!_

_Does, flow with milk and dig holes for your litters!”_

_I shall not hear. The embryos return_

_Into my dulled body. Across my sleep_

_There runs a wire fence to imprison the wind._

_I shall never feel the wind blowing again_

-Richard Adams, _Watership Down_

"Corm's barely keeping his head above water these days", said Ilsa, nestling her head into the crook of her husband's elbow as they stretched out on the green sofa.

"I got that impression too", he replied, not taking his gaze from the whatever-it-was on the telly, but gently stroking her head.

"He's gutted about Joan and buggering it up with Robin. Again. And I don't have the strength to deal with it."

"Of course you don't have to", Nick said. "You just use them as a distraction so you don't think about things. Fair enough, if it helps. If it doesn't, take a break".

She relaxed for just a moment -well, as much as she ever did- and let her husband's warm scent and hypnotic touch envelop her. Perhaps she would be able to sleep after all.

"I am sorry too", she said eventually. "Sorry you're always seeing me at my worst. And ashamed of it, you know? I can keep my game face on for nearly anyone else. But we've grown too close in the sense that I can't lie to you. I can't look braver than I feel in front of family."

Wordlessly, he dropped his hand from her headand slid it down to her shoulder to haul more of her onto his lap. He pressed a kiss into her rumpled hair.

"I've been an absolute bastard", he whispered. "You know how much. I am so sorry I said...what I said. I knew better. I'm not saying that, as your husband, I'm meant to prop you up all the time. As a doctor, I knew better."

She squeezed his hand, a little limply, but enough to notice. He took a deep breath, wished himself luck, and plunged ahead.

"There was nothing you could have done. Absolutely nothing. You're practicing law for Christ's sake, not doing parkour. It'a a fucking shame how women always blame themselves, and there's no excuse for me piling on to that...anyway, so many embryos just go in the first trimester. Maybe it was never genetically viable..."

He was growing incoherent and his voice faltered as he considered, once again, after days of false starts and recriminations, of tear-soaked hugs that had escalated into shouting matches, that embryo viability might not be the right thing to mention.

Nothing was, after all.

But Ilsa only inhaled deeply and said "it's very unfair of me to expect you to soldier on when I'm on edge and have been for ages."

"I'm not the one who has to take that awful hormone cocktail," he said.

"That was a while ago. It's been fine lately. But why am I still so nauseated!" she moaned.

"It will take a few weeks for the hCG to clear, even after the aspiration," he told her, pressing gentle fingers into the tension knot above her scapula.

"My doctor might have mentioned it. But I don't think I was listening, so I'm probably in trouble for that, too."

"That's all right", he whispered, noticing her tiny barb and letting it glance harmlessly off of one shoulder. "I'll go with you tomorrow. I'll listen to everything and take notes. And I'll remind you of how beautiful you are."

"Flatterer," she muttered back. "I feel like a scooped-out old avocado."

In response, he lifted her up and carried her to bed, something that still, after all these years, never failed to make her giggle. He grimaced a bit as he manoeuvred her up the stairs, but not at her weight; if anything, she had grown thinner and bonier than he'd remembered in recent times.

The bed had been turned down neatly and he kissed her forehead as he set her down. By undoing a button or two to slip open her pyjama top, he was able to trail kisses from the frieze of newly darkened veins between her breasts and down to her navel.   
  
"You're going to be ok", he breathed, planting a kiss an inch to the right of her navel, where she had administered her first injection (Gonal-F, his memory supplied, and she hadn't let him inject her or even watch); and then an inch to the left, where, as per her instructions, she had delivered the injection the following day.

(Of course, that had been five years ago, and even the haematomas from her latest cycle of injections had faded to nothing by now.)

Last of all, before climbing into bed himself, he kissed her four inches below her navel, over the scooped-out avocado, where they had heard another heart beating, only three weeks and another lifetime ago.


End file.
